This is going to be unpopular among many, but Mitt Romney is without a doubt the worst major presidential candidate I have ever seen. He has had the clearest path I’ve ever seen given to a candidate and he is still barely getting through. He’s arguing for his nomination by using math rather than by demonstrating it at the polls by racking up impressive victories. Here is a quick list of the advantages he is squandering:

Opponents that choked (T-Paw, Michele, Perry, Cain)

The most money

The biggest organization

Endorsements

Media

Super PAC

Delegate math

What the post above goes on to do is explain why Rick Santorum offers the best alternative to Mitt Romney’s floundering candidacy. Chris, the author of the The Mason Conservative, makes his argument by comparing and contrasting the two candidates.

The Mason Conservative is the first blog I read that seriously considered Santorum’s candidacy. In Would You Support This Candidate?, Chris enumerated Santorum’s stance on a long list of issues. At that point I had yet to decide who I wanted to support. I like that list, but I had to ask, “What has he done?” Well, there is an answer for that question. In fact, like any good politician, Santorum knows how to blow his own horn. So I suggest a visit to Why Rick.

Nevertheless, I don’t think Santorum’s accomplishments are what attracted Chris’ interest. What Chris seems to want is a candidate who can and will forcefully articulate the Conservative message. That’s why I think Chris wrote this back in June 2011.

Santorum’s chances run on how strong his foil is in the GOP primary. If someone like Sarah Palin or Rick Perry gets in, he will have a very hard time of it. But if the conservatives in the race remain who they are and Gov. Romney remains at the head of the class, Santorum has the media chops to go after him with a telegenic articulation that many of the other candidates simply don’t have. He’s a senator for 12 years, on Fox News since he lost in 2006, and has been a frequent stand-in for Bill Bennett’s morning radio show. The man knows how to talk and knows what he is talking about.

He will also force those in the party that don’t want to deal with social issues – Romney, Gingirch, Huntsman – to take a stand. And to the newer conservative faces like Bachmann and Cain, I think Santorum will force them to go deeper in knowledge and past just slogans because, if you’ve even listened to Santorum, he really does know what he’s talking about. (from here)

Here is the example Chris used.

Is Santorum as Conservative as most Conservatives would like? No, and it is clear that Chris does not think Santorum is a Conservative’s Conservative. That’s a point he makes in these two posts: A Echo, Not A Choice and Interesting Look At Santorum.What Santorum is is the best Conservative choice amongst the remaining Republican candidates.

Santorum is not too extreme on any the major issues.

Santorum is more Conservative than his Republican opponents.

Santorum knows how run a forceful and effective campaign.

Santorum can beat Barack Hussein Obama, and we can trust him to try to undo what that man has done.

Therefore, Chris is calling for Conservatives unite behind Santorum.

I think for the rest of the way, all conservatives must unite behind Rick Santorum. It is no longer just, “oh, Romney’s not a conservative, I can’t beat him.” I’ve become convinced that Mitt Romney is too weak to defeat Barack Obama. To beat a bully we need to fight back and I don’t believe Mitt Romney has what it takes to win when he doesn’t have all the built-in advantages. That whole list above? Those advantages are gone in a general election against Barack Obama. He won’t have the money, the establishment support, the math, the media, or the organization. All of that will be gone. (from here)

26 thoughts on “Mitt Romney vs. Rick Santorum”

What about my blog? I thought I wrote about how Santorum could win. I thought Cain, Bachmann or Perry could do better. But Santorum can win, should win, if he can win the nomination. Romney is weaker than Dole divided by MCain subtracted by Bush I.

Way back in November Chris saw Santorum as a strong candidate. Does Chris’ relatively higher opinion of Santorum make him wiser than us? I doubt the wisdom of defining wisdom that way. All I know is that for some reason Santorum is still in the race, and at this point he looks like the best Conservative choice.

That’s it! I almost changed my mind on Santorum until I realized that I can only trust Santorum to undo the damages of our current DOTUS. Tomorrow is my primary and I can’t wait! Even in my county there are those who must get out. Too many career politicians to boot out for the county and state.

Thanks for the article and video. I like how Santorum talks to the media, too. He knows their game and he shuts them down quite nicely, imo.

I’m in N.Il-Romney territory, especially near Chicago. Santorum stopped by a neighboring town this morning-oh, how I wish I’d have known! I would have loved to have shaken his hand, lol! Santorum is predicted to be strong in S.Il. I’m really praying hard for Santorum to win. Thankfully, we have all 4 candidates on the ballot because if I only had Romney and Paul to choose from, I’d be tempted to sit it out. I’m hoping the turnout will be good.

I don’t think it will happen, but I’m with ya Tom, please, please, please God, I pray let the nominee be (don’t Google his name) Rick (his fellow Catholics not voting for him) Santorum. After all, there is no way that that practical milk toast Mittington Romney can ever truly represent the genuine fanatics that are the heart and soul of Republican Party these days. Let’s finally turn this presidential debate into a fight over whether we would rather have the government in your private parts rather than your pocket book, and the let the American people decide. Wonder what the real power, the money, in the Republican Pary thinks about that brilliant idea? Whether they will ever let that happen?

Hello Tony – Real power? Money? You realize, I hope, that Democrats generally steal more of our money than Republicans.

You talk about fanaticism without seeming to have much understanding of it. When we define rights Conservatively, then we define a right as something that others can only take away. When rights are defined Conservatively, government exists only to protect our rights. If we define rights as those who have corrupted the word Liberal define a right, then we entitle our leaders to steal from some people to give other people their “rights”. When rights are defined in the corrupted Liberal sense, government exists to steal.

You have brought up this business of having government in our private parts twice, both times you did so when it was not readily apparent what the post had to do with the particular issue I think you have in mind. So I suppose you want to talk about it. Thus, I will do a post on it. You can expect it Sunday.

For the time being, I will just offer one salient observation. Democrats have already turned the debate into a fight over over keeping government out of our private parts and our pocketbooks. If you do not think government-run health care will involve government intrusions into our private parts and our pocketbooks, bias has rendered your brain entirely dysfunctional.

I come from a blue state, Illinois, that has been blue for over a generation. If the Dems are so wonderful then why are we on the brink of bankruptcy, Mr. Salmon? The Chicago Machine wasn’t a Repub idea, either… 😕

Sherry, it’s probably pointless to remind you that President Obama enherited an economic collapse, a new unpaidfor Medicare drug program, two unpaidfor wars, and your supposedly near bankrupt country from a Republican.

A fairly bipartisan (although certainly lead by Republicans) 30 year effort of deregulation and regulatory drift has nearly collapsed our economy and created wealth disparity and lack of opportunity that we have not seen since the guided age that preceded The Great Depression. True democracy requires broad distribution of the share of the economic wealth that a society creates (in other words, a vast middle class having most of that wealth), and true democracy therefore exists at odds with the wealth concentration that unfettered capitalism tends toward. On the other hand, capitalism over-restrained stiffles innovative wealth creation for everyone at all ends of the economic spectrum. The key is finding the right, ever shifting and always imperfect, balance of competition verses rules and umpires that will stimulate economic growth while ensuring that that pie of that prosperity will be shared broadly and fairly.

If you want to know when this balance has been at its best, simply look at the last hundred years of our history when we had the largest increase in Middle Class wealth in the history of mankind, and at the same time continued an unprecedented march toward increasingly equality of opportunity in race and gender, as well as other historically discriminated classifications. No objective look at 20th Century history can possibly imagine those economic and democratic gains without a balance between both proactive, effective federal government involvement and robust market capitalism,

After you look at that history, then the question becomes whether the reforms you are proposing are within the best of the american historical norms of that balance that our parents and grandparents fought for and succeeded by, or are they an-historic or regressive, taking us back to relive periods in our history that we really would not like to go through again, like the miserable average industrial working conditions of the turn of the last century, rivers-on-fire ecology of mid 20th Century, or the gender, race and class inequality of much of our history as a nation until recently.

There really is no easy perfect answer here. It’s a complex balance that is not static, constantly changing with technology and innovation and constantly tending toward becoming bloated, wasteful and corrupt, both on the capitalism side and the government side. It therefore is constantly in need of reform. However, reciting slogans and platitudes like “the only job of government is this or that” not only denies our complex history, it makes a mockery of what our forefathers, particularly our parents and grand parents, went through and what they achieved for us through good effective government. It also dooms our children and grandchildren to suffer the result of our failure to continue and improve upon the legacy that we inherited.

That said, Tom. What we have from the President is health “insurance” reform, not “government run health care.” If you want to talk about specifics, we can but the one that has most of you all fired up is the individual mandate (same as in Romney’s plan) that was basically cooked up by the conservative Heritage Foundation in order to effectively spread risk (the whole purpose of insurance). As someone who has employe provided health insurance, I stand to gain from the reform because, with everyone (especially the young and the poor) insured and not just showing up at expensive emergency rooms in crisis with no money and no insurance, a combination of risk spreading and more effective health care utilization should bring my costs down in the long run, at least that’s what the gurus at the Heritage Foundation thought (until they started running away from it when the political winds changed).

On Republican money, Mittington’s rich Wall Street donors allowed him to outspend Santorum 6 to 1 in Illinois and win even though all the energy in the Republican Party is with the Social Conservatives, like you, who want Santorum. Personally, I think that you are far from mainstream in those social views (except, maybe in the deep South) so it would be interesting to see if making that the focus of the general election under a Santorum nominee would fly with most of the country. I don’t think so. I would love to find out, but I don’t think the wealth in your Party will ever let us find out.

You are right, Mr. Salmon, it is pointless of you to write all that you did from the point you put the “Bush” inheritance on Obama in the first sentence. Thing is, Obama has made it a helluva lot worse, not even minutely better in the three years, two of which he had a Dem Congress. If it makes you feel better to blame then fine-its so childish, imo.

The concept is very simple – we all band together by voting together and vote out all the incumbents. We need to put party affiliation aside as it is dividing the country and causing problems. If we all vote together on this, we can change the entire compensation of our government and start to make changes. I have other ideas.

Check out my website and anything you can do to promote it, I will appreciate. We all need to work together to fix our country and the American dream.

Michael! Thanks for the links. I will peruse them soon, I promise. I did just as you said to do and voted out all of the incimbants-dems and repubs (I’m an Independant conservative). One incumbant was a congressman who had made a career out of being a congressman. Enough was enough even if he did good things for our district. he was from here anyways. Well, to my delight, many voters felt the same way. He got voted out. I must confess, I was surprised. I will say that he was never into the Chicago politics but he also didn’t help our state’s economy get better. I agree with your idea. If possible, we should work together. Looking forward to the time to peruse your sites and I may just get you on my blogroll. Pray for rain for me on Thursday so I can have that time-lol!

I know that what you are saying is the current party line, but it just is not factual. Since President Obama has been in office, we went from near economic collapse to recovery. We went from job losses to job gains. We went from the worst Recession since the Great Depression to modest growth. We went from Bin Laden loose to Bin Laden shot in the head and dumped in the ocean. You could argue that things could be even better, or that things might could be worse, if not for President Obama, but there is no doubt that things are better, and improving steadily.

I’m no fan of either political party. There’s plenty of blame to go around. You’re right Sherry, no doubt you can blame the democratic machine for the corruption and bankruptcy of Illinois. However, I have lived in the heart of the red South. Alabama’s largest county is bankrupt. Republicans have been in control for a long time, and you would have to look under every rock in Birmingham to find a Democrat to blame for Alabama’s economic and social pathologies (and that Democrat is probably now a Republican). However, if the current Republican philosophy of religious values, of low taxes on the rich and of governmental austerity really worked, then Alabama ought to be a model state of prosperity and moral virtue, but it usually trends toward the bottom in every such metric.

We need reform on every level, in government, in business and in moral values. Personally, I’m less interested in whether team x or team y is to blame (they are both to blame) or in your latest party slogan or dogma, than I am in expertise and accountability.

Our country has worked the best for the most of us when we have had a good balance between effective government and capitalism. I think my parents and grandparents have so far made the most progress of any time since the dawn of civilization. And that history shows that they did so, not by shrinking either government or markets, but by growing them both conjunction and coordination with each other. It’s not perfect and never will be. It’s not easy or simple and it never will be. But our parents’ example does show that the constant reform and retooling of the combination of effective government and market capitalism creates a level of general prosperity and individual liberty that is the best that it has ever been since civilization began. In fact of history, the reason for our current economic and social woes is because, for the last thirty years, both political parties have forgotten the lessons that our parents learned and that their history should have taught us.

Tony Salmon: You get an F for history and economics. Likewise, about blaming Republicans for Jefferson County, AL going bankrupt.

The economy would recover, ceteris paribus, if no one did anything. It is all based on capital. The 3 to 4% recovery from a lower base would happen if Daffy Duck were President. Unfortunately, it is worse than have Daffy, Mickey or Goofy in charge. The government spending kiils more jobs with taxation than it creates in make work. The deficit spending creates a fatal load of debt. Qualitative easing – printing money – causes inflation. Bush blew it on his bailouts. Obama made it worse.

Tony – When you blamed me for George W. Bush, I rolled my eyes. 🙄 Nonetheless, because your charges were so absurd, I often defended Bush. Yet I have never defend Bush’s bailouts or budget excesses. And the fact you want to blame me for Romney is just plain thickheaded.

Yes, if Romney is the nominee, I will vote for Romney. When the alternative is Obama, what else can I do? Vote for Obama? 😆

JAB, that is not a cogent argument, just presumption and pomposity without fact or substance.

Tom, you just lost me. I “blamed” both parties, and you invented neither. And no one in either party wants President G.W. Bush at their rallys.

Blame you for Romney??? You do take a lot on your shoulders.

Please go ahead and vote for Romney – good to see that you are willing to compromise. However, you may as well vote for Obama – policy-wise, in many ways, they are two peas in a pod. Obama’s just more likable (hell, “W” was more likable). Anyway, nice to see that you are a pragmatist after all.

Read Thomas E. Wood Jr’s “Meltdown” to understand the Housing Bubble and Great Recession. Read Amity Schlae’s “The Forgotten Man: A New History of The Great Depression” to understand the government blunders FDR made that made the Depression worse. Read Niall Ferguson’s “Ascent of Money” to understand the long view of economic history. Read Milton Friedman’s “Monetary History of the United States” to understand how wealth was created in the US.

If you find an error in the impeccable scholarship above, please let us know. I’ll consider raising your grades from F’s. When you’ve done your homework, I think you will find my short summary comment to be less pompous and more precise.

It seems that your scholarship is more one sided than “impeccable” (which often means it is not really scholarship at all). I am always looking for new reading material though, so thanks, I guess. I have read, or read of, some of what you recommended and my impression is that it is mostly revisionist, with just enough of a shadow of truth to give it a veneer of validity. Even Friedman would not recognize what many of these revisionists have done to his theories. Adam Smith also must constantly be revolving in his grave. However, as long as we are trading reading lists, here’s a few for you:

1. The Great Crash of 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith
2. “Economic Analysis of the Law” and “Pragmatism and Democracy” and “The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy” by Judge Richard Posner (as you may have guessed from the many selections, I am a big fan of Posner who, I should add is very much an “economic liberal” – I hope that you are not confused by that term)
3. The Darwin Economy by Robert H. Frank
4. “Globalization and it’s Discontents” by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz
5. “Pinched” by Don Peck and “Boomerang” by Michael Lewis (less scholarly but more readable recent journalistic works on The Great Recession)

Perhaps reading a few of these will broaden your horizons to the point of greater “scholarship”. I canrecommend others if you are interested in forming a book club or something. If you are half as smart as you apparently think you are, then you should be able to understand that both “the dismal science” and the study of governmental history has credentialed scholarly advocates at every extreme, each possessing some good evidence and reasoning, but like most of the most important things in life, the picture is far more complex than the formulaic proclamations that you are spouting. I have found that the truth often is subtle, subject to mirage, often almost whimsically elusive, mostly hides stealthily somewhere the middle ground.

In any event, you might want to cool it on the insulting, self-important, professorial approach. Although it is a little lame as a rhetorical device, I don’t mind the fun, but your friends here might accuse you of being “elitist” if you keep it up, and you know that you would not want that label sticking to you John Atticus Bowden. 😉

Personally, I don’t claim to be a “scholar” in much of anything, just a lifelong student who is far from knowing it all, and who is always deeply suspicious of those who do claim to.

Anyway, we are not likely to resolve much here, even if it were possible, by trading insults and barbs, enjoyable as that might be. Cheers.

Tony – I must admit that when JAB suggested books you should read I had to laugh. Since I have gotten so many book suggestions from you it seems wholly appropriate. As they say, what goes around comes around.

JAB – Whatever else might be said of Tony, we cannot complain that he does not read enough. Does he read what he should? Perhaps not.

Tony – Consider that how societies structure themselves is more art than science. As we do with science, we can identify and characterize some cause and effect relationships. Yet because our estimate of the quality of a society depends upon the eye of the beholder, governing is more art than science.

Before our leaders can reach our intellects, they must first conquer our hearts and capture our imaginations. Successful leaders generally use ideas that come from religious works, not volumes on political science or bone dry economic treatises. Thus, to understand America’s heritage you must read and carefully study the greatest book ever written, and that you have not done.

As you may have noted, I have a new post related to this discussion, RESTORING THE BALANCE? Unless a society has a firm moral foundation, the People have no place to stand. They drift, pushed about and driven by their latest desires.

46Why do you call Me, Lord, Lord, and do not [practice] what I tell you?

47For everyone who comes to Me and listens to My words [in order to heed their teaching] and does them, I will show you what he is like:

48He is like a man building a house, who dug and went down deep and laid a foundation upon the rock; and when a flood arose, the torrent broke against that house and could not shake or move it, because it had been securely built or [a]founded on a rock.

49But he who merely hears and does not practice doing My words is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation, against which the torrent burst, and immediately it collapsed and fell, and the breaking and ruin of that house was great.

Tom, you are onto a key concept. What are the ideas that motivate humankind? How do we understand them. My shorthand is: Culture commands, demographics are destiny, individuals can think outside their culture to create new or changed ideas, ideas motivate humankind, culture changes, demographics are destiny. (Clear or obtuse?)
Cultures is like the foundation dug in earth. The earth is the geography, history to date, etc of where, when a culture is created. The building built is the nation that goes from tribes to great civilizations. On top of that there are edifices built which are individual countries and/or sub-culture people groups.

Our America is built on Enlightenment, English, Protestant ideas – thus the King James Bible is a cornerstone – that became “American” on 4 July 1776. (See late Samuel Huntington’s “Who Are We”)

Tony: Woods, Schlaes, Ferguson, Friedman’s scholarship is impeccable.
If you find an error in their scholarship, please do tell.

You are right that economic or historic truth is complex.
But, weak thinking can be separated from solid work. Empirical analysis can help.

In history there are schools of historiography. The current liberal lens of race, class and gender is bovine scatology. Just like Marxist dialectics, it can be proven – empirically – to be completely and utterly false.

In economics the same is true with schools of economics. Marxism has been completely discredited. Keynesian theory is heading there. At the basic levels of consensus knowledge there is complete agreement on what is micro and macro econ. There is no liberal or conservative laws of supply and demand. Thus, the distinction between economic laws and theories. Laws are good to go.

So, when the President Barry Soetero’s economic advisor claims in early 2009 that their stimulus will insure that unemployment does not go over 8% and recovery to status quo ante will be in X months – it shows their incompetence when it all fails so badly.

Some time ago I read the drivel Robert Reich wrote. He was long on adjectives and short on numbers. Yet, the numbers taught in Keynesian economics at very liberal universities are telling. Like the fact that the single most important independent variable to increase the GDP is productivity. And government spending produces less than 28 cents of GDP growth for every dollar spent. And (dated numbers) every $150m in taxes kills 5k jobs.

Thanks for the book list. I read Galbraith years ago. He nailed much of what would be the terrible consequences of the Great Society in the 60s. Never heard of Posner. Might get to him in few years when I clear my backlog of good books I’ve bought.

I have been reading one of Samuel Huntington’s books, “The Clash of Civilizations.” Occasionally, if the book seems interesting, I take up Tony on one of his book recommendations. Since “The Clash of Civilizations” was worth reading, I suspect “Who Are We” is good too.

I have read something Richard A. Posner wrote. Posner is an interesting character, but one book was enough.

I am afraid I understand Tony’s point of view better than He thinks. There was a time I shared it. Then it slowly dawned upon me just how ignorant I was of American history. Even though I enjoyed reading history books, instead of reading what historical figures had actually written, I tended to read what had been written by historians. That included reading what had been written about the Bible instead of the Bible itself. After living for 50 years, I finally decided to read the Bible. I found the Good Book far more impressive than its critics.

Because academia is too well populated by Liberals, history books often reflect institutional biases, particularly with respect to the influence of the Christian religion on American history. The only good way around that bias is to read books that predate the 20th Century. If we want to understand what the Founders intended, we need to read what the Founders read and wrote.

CT: You will enjoy both of Huntington’s books. He was a super scholar. When I was in grad school #1 I enjoyed listening to him every chance I got.

Congrats on reading the Bible. I’ve been doing it for 30 years. It is a life changer. The first time I saw many conflicts and contradictions in scripture. Around my 4th reading they started to smooth out. Also, teaching Sunday School for 22 years and engaging in Bible Study for 5 years widely separated in time – gave commentaries from scholars who read Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic.

Agree on reading original sources when you can. I read Madison’s notes on the Constitutional Convention last year for the first time – instead of reading about it.

Enjoy your time in The Word. I count my time before reading as loss and all time since reading as gain.

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts.” Ronald Reagan.